3D Printing Buddha Statues

800 years old Statue of Qianshou Guanyin was restored using the 3D Printing technology.

3D printing is one of the modern and emerging technology which is known for making the three-dimensional objects . This 3D technology can be used to make objects of any shape or model that exists in geometry. According to the source, a 3D printer can be categorized as same as industrial robots. It is a process where three-dimensional objects are created from the digital file of particular objects.

There are many purpose of 3D printing such as making an exact replica of ancient sculpture, or reducing the lead time and cost of developing new parts of devices and automobiles. But recently, 3D Printing technology has been used in the large range in Japan in order to reduce the theft of ancient Buddhist statues and sculpture.

In recent news of China , 800 years old Buddhist statue was restored with the help of 3D printing technology. The statue of Qianshou Guanyin or Thousand Hands Goddess is around 800 years old and dates back to the Southern Song Dynasty ( 1127-1279 ). According to Chinese news, this 800 years old Goddess statue was undergoing major construction and that would take a large amount of financial support to reconstruct such large scale statue using the traditional method.

"3D Printing Buddha Statues in Japan"

According to the crime statistics of Japan , there had been the record of 105 reported thefts of Buddha statues between the year of 2007 and 2009. Buddhism is considered as one of the major religions of Japan and most of the religious Buddhist groups worship Buddha statues that are found in most of the Buddhist temples of Japan. These old and valuable Buddha statues are worth lots of money thus the thefts of Buddha statues are at a very high rate.

Many Buddhist groups of different temples and places had started to agree on using 3D Printing technology in order to create the exact replica of the original Buddhist sculptures and Buddha statues .

“There really is no other way to permanently guard the Buddha Statue. With this 3D printed replica, people will feel at ease as long as 3D printed statue is enshrined in the temple…” – said Buddhist temple’s Abbot.

Recently in Japan , a group of students from the Prefectural Wakayama Technical High School have made an exact replica of Aizen Myoo Statue using 3D scanners and printers. According to the students, it took them around 6 months to complete to model. The original owner of Aizen Myoo Statue moved the statue to the secure location and used the 3D copy to be kept in the temple.

In recent Japan news source, 3D printed Buddha sculpture was added to the Seitaiji Temple . The abbot of Seitaiji Temple moved the original Buddha sculpture to Shimane Museum so that this old and ancient Buddha statue will be secure. The Abbot was quite amazed and agreed on the idea of using 3D printed Buddha statue since it can be made in low cost and highly accurate replica.